High-concept progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria announced on April 4 that they have officially signed with Roadrunner Records in advance of their upcoming headlining U.S. summer tour alongside pop-punk giants Taking Back Sunday, with Story So Far in tow in support.
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Along with an inscrutable video titled "Call Your Mother" released thought Roadrunner's official YouTube channel, Coheed and Cambria have also confirmed via Alternative Press that they will have a new, as-yet untitled album out before the end of 2018. The new release will be their ninth studio LP.
The band's most recent album, 2015's The Color Before The Sun, was also the first in their catalogue not to conceptually center on the sci-fi/fantasy realm of the eponymous characters Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon, protagonists of an extended storyline detailed in The Amory Wars, a graphic novel written and published by vocalist/lead singer Claudio Sanchez. All of Coheed and Cambria's first seven releases were concept albums set in the Amory Wars universe, while The Color Before The Sun took a more autobiographical approach to recent events in Sanchez's personal life.
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The video tease Coheed and Cambria released along with today's announcement features a quiet monologue read over a smoky montage of an armored mask being forged and decorated, apparently for battle. "Know there is no time/ Space, between the Well and Unknowing/ our story starts there/ well within our future, yet far beyond our past/ In a romance between a pair of unheavenly creatures," the wizened voice growls over spacey, crackling static, as the camera pans to reveal the words "Call Your Mother" painted across the face of the war mask.
Now, later chapters of Sanchez's Amory Wars comic book cycle shift their narrative focus from Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon to their son, the messianic prince Claudio Kilgannon – might this mean that the band's forthcoming album will take listeners back into the galactic realms of Heaven's Fence, the Keywork, and the roots of Claudio's battle against Wilhelm Ryan, the evil Archmage? Time will tell.
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Coheed and Cambria's U.S. summer tour with Taking Back Sunday and Story So Far will kick off on July 7 at Miami's Bayfront Park Amphitheater, and run through Aug. 8, where it will wrap up in Phoenix, Ariz., at Comerica Theater. Tickets to some shows are still available.
